Who would be Queen of Romania today?

The Kingdom of Romania existed between 1881 and 1947. Romania operated on salic law, which meant that women were barred from the throne. However, as King Michael designated his eldest daughter as his heir, we will differentiate between Queen consort and Queen regnant.

From 1930, the controversial King Carol II reigned. He had been married twice, with his first marriage to Zizi Lambrino being annulled in 1919. However, she gave birth to their (illegitimate) son, also named Carol, in January 1920. He married Princess Helen of Greece and Denmark in 1921, and they divorced before he became King. Nevertheless, she was known as Queen Mother during her son’s two reigns. Following his abdication in 1940, he married Magda Lupescu. Thus, there was never a Queen during King Carol II’s reign.

His son with Helen became King Michael I in 1940. He had also been King briefly between 1927 and 1930. In November 1947, he met his future wife, Princess Anne of Bourbon-Parma, while he was in London for the wedding of the future Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh. When he returned to Romania shortly after that, he was forced to abdicate and leave the country.

Despite his abdication, he continued with his plans to marry Princess Anne, and the two families turned to the Vatican to secure the dispensation Princess Anne needed to marry a non-Catholic. The dispensation was not given, but the couple married anyway on 10 June 1948. This made it invalid in the eyes of the Catholic church, but not in other religions. As King Michael was no longer a reigning monarch, Anne became his titular Queen consort.

Michael and Anne went on to have five daughters together: Margareta (born 1949), Elena (born 1950), Irina (born 1953), Sophie (born 1957) and Maria (born 1964). According to the now-defunct constitution, women could not inherit the throne. In 2007, the former King Michael designated his eldest daughter as heir to the defunct throne. If we assume this would have been accepted while the Kingdom still existed, Margareta became (titular) Queen regnant upon her father’s death in 2017. Margareta is married to Radu Duda, but they do not have any children together.

Because Margareta was appointed as King Michael’s heir, there is a disputed claim. According to the defunct constitution, the throne would pass to the Hohenzollern family if there were no more sons. The current head of the House of Hohenzollern is Karl Friedrich, Prince of Hohenzollern. He is a great-grandson of William, Prince of Hohenzollern, the elder brother of Ferdinand I, King of Romania.

Karl Friedrich had married Countess Alexandra Schenck von Stauffenberg in 1985, and they had four children together. They divorced in 2010 before Karl Friedrich would have had a claim to the Romanian throne. He remarried to Katharina Maria de Zomer in 2010, making her the disputed titular Queen consort of Romania.